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Recognizing the Mother by Alex Crow

It has been said that we came from the waters. As the story goes, all life was once a seed planted in the womb of Earth’s oceans. I feel this to be true in my bones when I’m close to the ocean shoreline. Maybe it’s just in my Mediterranean blood line, or perhaps it is simply the recognition of my body to its mother. It feels deeper than instinct.

I grew up without much of a conscious relationship with the Earth. We didn’t have a garden at home. My parents did their best to cook for my three sisters and I when they could, but we often ate fast food for dinner with how busy we all were. I didn’t learn how to speak to the Earth through song or dance. I never learned the ways of plants, and I didn’t camp (except once in my own back yard). It wasn’t until I moved to California that I began to develop a spiritual relationship with the Earth, mostly the ocean. As a child I was blessed to visit family along the Mediterranean Sea quite a few times, but never did I truly understand my roots until moving to California.

The ocean calls to me.

There have been days where the only thing in the world that could sooth my “mid-twenty weariness” would be to literally run into the cold Pacific Ocean waves. The deafening sound of the wind, and the soft but strong force of the ocean currents could rock me back and forth until my worries had simply been washed away. The salty-sandy texture left in my hair and on my sun drenched skin only added to the sweetness of release. I know the ocean as my mother, our mother. She has shown me compassion through the space she creates for healing, power in the sheer force of her body, and she blows my mind away with her vastness. Every time I go to her I am renewed; she gives me space to be, and I love her like I love my own birth mother…with an intensity i do not fully understand.

I sometimes wish I had gills so I could live within the ocean world and be close to Her in that way. As a child I have memories of submerging myself underwater in my grandma’s pool. I loved looking up at the surface from below. It seems I have always been a deep diver… someone who finds joy in going deep within myself and with others. I just feel comforted by the direction – IN.

This is a story is of recognition. We all feel the energy of the Mother in our own unique ways. With me, it’s through the waters. And now, every time I approach the ocean, I do so with reverence and gratitude. I honor the connection we have. The bond is sacred, and I hold it with deep love and responsibility. I feel it as my duty to do my best to return the love that she so selflessly gives to all of her children, to protect her as I would defend my own mother, and to honor her with every breath, every meal, every sip of water, every bath I take in her healing waters.

Mama Earth, I thank you for all that you do to sustain my life and the lives of us all. I love you.

<3 Alex Crow

“Knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate. But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond…I wonder if much that ails our society stems from the fact that we have allowed ourselves to be cut off from that love of, and from, the land. It is medicine for broken land and empty hearts.”

~Robin Wall Kimmerer

Alex Crow teaches regularly at Laughing Lotus Yoga Center in San Francisco. She is also a Reiki Master and a co-founder of vîv, an all female Bay Area dance collective.

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